Leen usually took an interest in my blogging but she wasn’t much interested in blogging herself. That’s why I was pleasantly surprised when she decided to start a blog. And that’s why I’m not very surprised that she’s shutting down her blog now. Yeah, it was fun, but she’s just not into it. Like she says, if anything interesting happens to us, I’ll probably blog about it anyway. Plus I always put our photos up. She isn’t really into writing for writing’s sake, so if she’s not going to put up stories or pictures, she doesn’t feel there’s any reason for her to keep blogging. The Queen has left the building.

But the doctor is in! Another pleasant surprise: she’s started a new blog. The new one revolves around dentistry. She struggles for words when writing about day-to-day stuff in English, but ask her to write about dentistry in Malay and she does the same thing I do when I write in English about just about anything: she goes on and on and on and on. And it’s great, because she’s passionate about this. She said she wants to have a blog where she writes about dentistry in Malay, so that she can educate the Malay community about oral health issues. Neither of us is really sure whether the people who really need such education would even go online to read such a blog, but surely there are plenty of people who prefer to confine their online experience to Malay-language sites. The fact is, while there are tons of great dental sites out there, most of them are in English. Leen doesn’t know if a Malay dental blog would take off, but she doesn’t care: at least it would be there, so if people are looking for certain information in Malay, it would be available to them.

One of the great ironies in my life is that I married a dentist. I’ve always been terrified of dentists, from my blood-curdling visits with Dr. Hall over in Westmount when I was a kid to the time Dr. Murray jabbed me six times before giving up just a few years ago in Halifax. I dread a visit to the dentist more than anything. I swear, the anxiety I feel at the thought of letting Leen (or any other dentist) do a filling is actually worse than the anxiety I felt before getting my right nut lopped off five years ago. I’m serious. I still have all of my wisdom teeth; I think I’m just going to let them rot out on their own.

Did you know Malaysian dentists usually don’t use any local anaesthetic when they do fillings? They don’t freeze your mouth first, they just start drilling. Oh, the horror! Well, since moving to Malaysia I’ve been learning a lot about the wonderful world of Malaysian dentistry, thanks to Leen’s experiences in hospitals, government clinics, and private clinics.

Dr. Giggles, beware!

With her new blog, Leen hopes to provide advice on prevention, treatments, aesthetic dentistry, and other things, so people will know what they’re getting into when they walk into a clinic. There are lots of things Malaysians need to know about going to the dentist. She also hopes to provide guidance to patients so that they don’t fall prey to certain unethical practices that are unfortunately rampant in Malaysia. For example, did you know that some clinics try to save costs by reusing supplies such as disposable bibs and gloves, saliva suction tubes, even leftover anaesthetic solution (that’s the stuff that goes into the syringe to numb your mouth—they inject it back into the bottle). And did you know that some dentists do unnecessary fillings so they can get more money? If you’ve gone to the dentist and were told you had a hole in your tooth, there might not have actually been a hole until the dentist drilled one! Some dentists will drill at the sight of anything that looks like a hole, even if it’s only a stain. Leen’s witnessed all of these things. Interestingly enough, while working for the government left much to be desired (like the fact that when she was on call she sometimes had to sew on lips, noses, and scalps), the unethical stuff is almost unheard of in government clinics (they are, after all, not there to make a profit, plus who has time to cheat anyone when you’ve got to treat a hundred patients a day?). If you didn’t know about all these things, join the club, because neither did I! But Leen does, and she wants to share what she knows, to empower her community and hopefully improve its oral health.

Like I said, she isn’t sure if it’ll take off, but she wants to at least make some kind of contribution to the community she came from.

It’s all in the early stages now, but I’ll be sure to put a link up when it’s ready. It’s nothing fancy in terms of graphics or anything like that, but I think it will be useful. And it can help me with my Malay!